Recently in Plans Category

I had lots of things I wanted to achieve this month in the garden but reality strikes, we got sick with some stomach bug, one of the dogs had an allergic reaction to a bee sting, work and basically life got in the way. BUT (and there has to be a but right?) I did manage to sneak in some hard landscaping on the last day of the month! I got the slabs and stones down near the mailbox. I always tend to take the short cut on the soil rather than use the driveway so might as well make it a fixure, plus it adds interest right?

The big stones will get moved into permanent positions as soon as I add some more plants and bark chips mulch. The plants on the right are Agapanthus I believe, and have pretty much settled in nicely since I moved them, they get more sun there and don't need watering much which is good for me :)

I also have some flowering bulbs to put in which should provide some color as the seasons change, and I plan on maybe having some containers in groups (just dollar store terracotta pots just incase they get nabbed) which will have annuals. I would dearly love to have edibles in the sidewalk strip, but I'm going with low maintenance because every dog that gets walked up the street pretty much pees on the sidewalk strips so I guess this is my ornamental garden. If I get brave later I'll see about veggies/herbs in containers maybe or edible flowers. At least ornamental plants can be beneficial to the veggies!

For May I would dearly love to get the sidewalk strip finished completely, but the  landscaping plans are changing we'll see. In back garden goals I'd like to get a trellis on the remaining beds so I'm ready for summer! Oh and the ever perpetual goal of weeding *sigh*

Glogging, that's garden blogging, is very useful. It provides a permanent record of activities, plantings, harvests and most of all lessons learned! I learned so much last year in my first gardening year in America and I wanted to make a little reminder to myself for things to remember for next fall.

• Plant cool season crops earlier - I was late setting seeds for Fall/winter and the broccoli bolted before it was ready. The weather was unseasonably dry and warm so far in 2009 but something to consider for next year

• Trellis - sturdy trellis is required due to the Santa Ana winds here in So Cal! Nearly lost the pea plants this year because of flimsy trellis and strong winds!

• Spacing - some plants just don't keep within their sq ft boundaries! Collard greens overtook other squares and crowded out some plants altogether!

• Check often - cannot stress this enough! Just because it's winter the plants still need checking daily! Mostly for harvesting. I missed the ball on a cauliflower because I didn't check it often enough and picked it just past it's prime.
  

I know I'll learn a lot more as the seasons and years progress, but learning from mistakes is all part of the gardening process right?

I mentioned before about my raised beds with cinderblocks but today I thought I'd post about my raised beds made from wood, the reasons why I opted for raised beds etc, and a step by step progress over the last year! When we moved into the house in 2002 our lot was pretty overgrown as the previous owners had poor health and the garden had all but been abandoned. However I took on the challenge and tackled it bit by bit. We had an old fence that was rotten and falling to pieces, behind which was a slope which was pretty unusable on one side and tiered on the other with telegraph poles.

After taking down the fence and removing LOTS of iris plants (they pop up like weeds here) we could see potential. Pretty much over the course of 2003 - 2005 the garden looked either barren or weed city. We had existing citrus trees (orange and grapefruit) which we neglected. We knew that for ANY of our future garden plans we needed to get rid of the palm tree which was located right in the center of the flattest part of our garden. In October 2005 Bob bought a chainsaw and set to work cutting it down.

Again the next couple of years passed with a few gardening activities (dwarf citrus in containers) and then in 2007 I began to see light at the end of the tunnel. I wanted to grow edibles again as I had in England and so out came the root stump and in went some edible plants.

What I didn't bank on was the crappy soil. We had clay back home but this here was pretty terrible. The plants did poorly and so I looked into alternatives. I was growing in containers which were doing well so I opted for raised beds. Sure the initial expense would be higher but once in they'd last a few years and the harvests would increase. Most importantly it'd be homegrown. The more I learned about industrial farming the more I knew I wanted homegrown organic produce. So we got wood, we got chicken wire and compost/soil and went to work

Soon we had three raised beds in the ground by October 2008, full of soil and ready to plant. I got busy on that one immediately and got my winter crops in which I have been harvesting for months now. As you can see from the grids I've been using the square foot gardening method :)

Now sure there is still LOTS I want to accomplish in the garden both front and back but it's all about baby steps! Since making these beds and getting winter crops in I've put some bark chips around the beds (everything to the right of the hose pipe is mulched). The back looks TONS better, and as you can see the beds are pretty productive, but still lots of plans to put into action!  [ignore the stepladder! That's there as a precaution due to the trellis buckling in the high winds last month!]

I think that's one great thing about the blogging aspect of gardening, seeing the changes each month. The beds sure do look different right now than they did 6 months ago! And compared to the first clearing it looks much better, but like I said still a long way to go!

Calling this part one because this is so not the finished project! It became apparent as soon as I sowed my seeds that a grow light system was going to be on the project agenda this year. However in true frugal "use what you have" style I raided the garage and put this together.

Nope it's not perfect and ideally I'd like to make more use of the light on the end but for now it works. It's a T8 light (supplies from the garage) with  2 bulbs, supported on boxes over the seed tray. Since I took the pic I raised the seed tray nearer the light using some packing materials we had on hand. In all it works for now but I am planning a proper shelving unit for the next batch. Oh and it's sitting on the dog crates cos there is nowhere else right now to put them! 

For seed trays, well last month I bought one of these Jiffy trays with 72 peat pots. I hadn't used them before and I was quite impressed with them. I was kinda worried though as it's tough to buy the replacement pellets, but I've since seen that the insert to hold those lifts out and I can use the pots instead which I can find locally :)

Here is a pic of the ever growing seedlings! I thinned them out just prior to this pic, though I'm not sure what to do with the arugala (does it need thinning?) so I need to research that. Some of the plants are ready to transplant to bigger pots too!

So there you have it! A make-shift, make-do lighting system for seedlings. Total cost = nothing, which is even better :)

• Work on sidewalk strip: After postponing the east face strip renovation I moved onto the sidewalk strip. My goal was to get it weeded, de-rooted, palm tree free and basically dug over. It's a standard size strip but the sheer amount of trees, roots and growth was overwhelming! After the help of a neighbor to remove some of the old tree roots I knew it was a matter of digging the rest over, and basically keep chipping at it when I could. After hours of work I have this:

not perfect but not bad! Still needs work which will carry over into March. In March I should get it cleared then be able to start landscaping! Hurrah, something easy after all that digging!

• Plant seeds for Summer crops:  Done! More than done! I planted probably more than I need of some stuff, but plan on succession planting in another few weeks. Haven't started a lot of the tomatoes yet need to get on that! Waiting for Bob to make me a grow light shelving unit type thing :)
  

• Get ground cover between raised beds: Well I called about the ad in the paper for free tree chips. The guy called me back on the 25th and said "they are leafy and would look like crap around raised beds" so needless to say I hit plan B this month. Which is move this goal to March when I have some more money to invest in bark chips.
  

That's about it for February!

Last year was my first foray into vegetable gardening and I didn't really know what I was doing. I think this was a bonus really as it allowed me to make mistakes, to try new things and learn. There were many experiments last year but the one that sticks in my mind as the most successful is the "Cherry Tomato Experiment". See I bought a pack of tomato plants from the garden center but I wanted cherry tomato too and couldn't find plants locally, only seeds. Now my budget was slim pickings last year so I figured why not try growing from grocery store produce? So I checked the fridge and had grape tomatoes in there, cut em up, squidged out the seeds, rinsed em, dried em then put them in potting soil.

This actually proved pretty successful with about 95% of the seeds germinating! I had some in eggcartons and some in plastic seedling starters and both germinated. Not knowing what I was doing I tried to save them ALL rather than pinching out to the strongest seedling in each cell and lost a few seedling that way. In all I think I ended up with 10 pretty strong small plants in the experiment.

All the containers were recycled from the kitchen or from other plants so nothing new was bought for this experiment, the only thing it cost was time, and a little potting soil.  I lost a few plants in the great heatwave of June 2008, when temperatures soared to 110 degrees for two weeks solid, but I still managed to keep about 6 alive. As the plants grew, when they got to around 8" I put them in their big containers or in the ground.

The plants in containers did better, cos frankly our soil is pathetic, which I had no clue back then. Basically horrid clay soil, very little nutrients and probably 1-2 worms for the whole back yard (this was the reason for the raised beds later in the year!). Still they produced flowers! Which pollinated! And produced baby fruits!

Now I still figured it all had time to go horribly wrong as if they were hybrid tomatoes that I bought well they wouldn't be true to seed. Even if they did continue to grow and ripen would they taste ok? That was my ONLY criteria. If they tasted ok, then they were worth it.

Happy to report they did grow, they did ripen, and they tasted just fine. A little sweeter than the originals but then they were homegrown and organically grown so no surprise. I'd estimate I harvested a couple of lbs of cherry grape tomatoes from those plants. Not bad for nothing!

I guess the lesson of this experiment is that even if you have NO money you can still garden, and produce edibles! If it doesn't turn out then so what? I had plenty of failed experiments last year! Most of the plants were lost during the aforementioned heatwave in June so I don't take credit for killing them, but I lost nothing by trying!

And you can bet your butt I'll be trying some experiments again this year so stay tuned!!!

• Work on East facing strip of front garden: This project is on hold right now. After working on the area for a few hours it occurred to me that 'if' we do get an RV or similar vehicle that we've discussed previously this is the area that it would be parked! I'd been told by a friend that it was against city ordinance to park the RV on the driveway so I called the city (and checked the site online) and nope it's perfectly fine. We just have to pave the area and we're golden. Needless to say that area is on hold till we decide what we're doing. I'll still work on the plot as we need to clear the area either way no matter what we do on it, but it's not a priority right now (not like the rest of the yard!) so I'm changing the goals to reflect this change of focus...

• Work on sidewalk strip: This was the area I started first but it was disheartening as there are palm trees that needed removing, juniper roots and a whole lot of stones and debris. I was lucky on Thursday that a neighbor saw me out and asked if I wanted help removing the palm trees! Naturally I accepted the offer and we made good headway in the 3 hours I was out there! Pretty much since then it's either been raining or soggy wet. The picture above is an old one from last year but you can see the highlighted area I'm talking about, and the arrows point to palms/trees we took out last week! I just need to dig over, remove weeds/grass and work my way down. Right now I have dug over from the driveway to about a foot past the mailbox. As you can see LOTS of work to do!!! I need to get out there and take some new pics really! Will do that this month for the month end round up!
  

• Plant seeds for Summer crops: Planted lots of seeds, but then we had a frost so hopefully they will be ok! Planted: tomato, eggplant, herbs, pumpkin, peppers and more. I need to get a better system for keeping track! I also need to find a good seed starter trays. The ones we saw at walmart looked ok but I prefer individual cells and theirs were ones that you had to buy the coir/peat pots each time which is not me at all. But then maybe I should try them? They did smaller ones so perhaps I will give them a go? Be nice to have something that lasts season after season.
  

• Get ground cover between raised beds: Not done yet. Honestly the weather has hindered this. Basically I need the ground cover cos when it rains it's muddy (plus it'll stop weeds) but it's too wet most days to get out there, or I can't rely on good weather for drop off and me hauling it round the back! *sigh* Someone tell mother nature to cooperate with my gardening schedule please!!!

I already mentioned that my quests for Yardcraft would be monthly but I will break them down into manageable chunks. Otherwise I tend to get overwhelmed and give up. Besides continuing to grow all the fruit and veg I can (and extend my planting space) the BIG project for 2009 is the landscaping of the front garden into an edible oasis. I also want to eek out more planting space in the back garden, get more pots, get fruit canes and basically just grow more, more, more!

February quests:

• Work on East facing strip of front garden. This strip runs along the boundry of our neighbors and our driveway from the house to the sidewalk. It probably won't all get done in February but I hope to have at least the top 1/3 done. Using existing pile of rocks I am building a natural raised bed and retaining wall as the lot is sloped and I want it to retain water better. Eventually I'd like to plant the peach tree, and some veggies along here. Maybe grapes and some strawberry plants too! You can see the strip of garden on the pic below
  

• Plant seeds for Summer crops! I have TONS of seeds to sow this month to prepare for the Summer season. Hoping for a double crop so better get busy NOW and get planting!!!
• Get ground cover between raised beds. The back garden needs the bare soil covering between the beds so I plan on researching my options and getting those  covered up this month. Thinking tree chips, I saw a free ad in the local paper so may give them a call later this month.
  

As you can see I have my work cut out for me this month! Good job I committed to getting out in the garden DAILY when possible this month! Though impossible right now as it is raining in buckets right now! Which is good, we need rain!!! We we're headed for a drought, hopefully the rain and snow we're getting will help tremendously with that.

In the meantime I'll be planning the garden, and thinking about seed sowing whilst it's raining :)